


with aeschylus inked on her arms

by ThePaperBagPrincess



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ancient Runes, Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Harry Potter Next Generation, Literature, Next Gen, Romance, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-07-24
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:43:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePaperBagPrincess/pseuds/ThePaperBagPrincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She speaks in quotes and riddles, and it is like talking in a language you almost understand; you hear the words and you know that you know them, and you grasp for the meaning and it slips from you, just out of reach."</p><p>A story of forbidden love, betrayal, and the journey called life; of a boy who cannot trust, and a girl who speaks in the words of others better than her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Caesar's Angel

# Part One

## Caesar's Angel

Her fourth year. His seventh. April, but it feels like a good day in August.

The top of the Astronomy tower, and she's reading a book, a thick paperback with a black and gold cover. He's never spoken to her before, but he can't help but notice the perfect ivory curve of her shoulder as her t-shirt slips off it, and the light freckles that cover it. And he wants her to look at him, damnit, because girls _always_ look at him, but all he gets is a glance that doesn't even take in who he is, let alone the sweep of dark hair and the brown eyes with the flecks of gold in them and the warm smile he flashes her way. Instead, she frowns slightly, irritated by the interruption to her reading, and then returns her attention to her book, red hair falling in front of her face as the sun sets the edges of it on fire.

He offers her a cigarette. She says no, not even a thank you. He asks her what she's reading, and she holds it up without even looking at him, so he can see for himself. It is _The Oresteia_. He cannot immediately think of a comment, so there is silence for a few moments while he observes her, cigarette dangling from his mouth. Then he removes it to speak again.

"Ever been to Greece?"

And finally she is looking at him and actually seeing him, assessing whether or not he is really worth talking to.

"No."

"I have," she did not ask, but he answers anyway, "My grandmother's Greek. We've got a house out there."

Her attention is caught, but she refuses to be impressed.

"That's nice for you. I only like the literature really."

He nods, a faint grin crossing his face. "Fair enough. _'Oh, the torment bred in the race, the grinding scream of death...'_ " he quotes casually, nodding at the book in her hand, and breaking off, because this time she cannot keep the respect off her face, although her voice is as casual as his as she quotes back.

" _'and the stroke that hits the vein, the haemorrhage none can staunch, the grief, the curse no man can bear,'_ " briefly, she smiles at him, " _The Libation Bearers_. I'm going to get that as a tattoo some time."

Somehow, he believes her.

"Sure you don't want a cigarette?" he asks, after a pause.

"No, thanks."

* * *

Her fifth year. He's researching Ancient Runes, in Greece of all places, and as he stands among the Doric columns, he can't help thinking of her, quoting Aeschylus at him on the top of the Astronomy Tower. Nor of the taste of her when he kissed her, later.

And it isn't _that_ bad, he tells himself, because she's sixteen now (she was only fifteen when he kissed her first, but he dismisses that detail) and he's only just turned nineteen, and he doesn't know anyone else who can quote more literature than him, and somehow the beautiful words falling from her lips are such a turn on that all obstacles cease to matter.

"I miss you," he writes on the postcard with the picture of the Crete coastline on the front, "But hey, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. Wish you were here. Alex."

" _Always toward absent lovers love's tide stronger flows_ ," comes the reply, "Sextus Propertius, _Elegies_. Roman poet born around 45BC, earliest known form of the proverb. Rose."

And he is left wondering whether she is telling him she misses him too, or whether she just likes knowing this stuff, but it hardly matters because he still wants her, whether she's kind or not. And he can play this game and dance this dance too, so he calls her Lady Disdain in his letters, and doesn't tell her that he lies awake in the velvet Mediterranean night and imagines her lithe form lying next to him, or that when he closes his eyes, all he sees are the brightness of her hair and the scatter of freckles across her nose and the condescending smile she gives him when she's right about something.

* * *

The middle of her sixth year. Just after his twentieth birthday.

He comes home to find that she has indeed had the passage from _The Libation Bearers_ tattooed in navy blue from her neck to her wrist, and there's something about it that just fascinates him, whether it's the power of the words or the erotic beauty of the art on her body. She lets him trace the letters down her arm, and then she lets him trace the contours of her body, fire and ice across her skin, and she is just as eager as he is as her fingers push his clothes away. He is her first, and although she doesn't have it in her to act the scared, innocent girl, it is perhaps the most vulnerable he has ever seen her. He is careful and considerate though, and murmurs sweet words in her ear, and she gasps and moves against him, and looks into his eyes as they fall together into white.

And afterwards, he offers her a cigarette again, and she says yes and smokes it like an expert, so that, for a moment, he wonders with some resentment who has been giving her cigarettes while he was away. She lies on her back as she inhales slowly, staring at the ceiling with that inscrutable expression, and he watches her and waits.

" _The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it_ ," she says at last, her fingers moving the cigarette away from her lips as a small smile tugs at the corner of them. And he laughs and runs a hand down her ink-covered arm.

"Oscar Wilde," he comments, "And have you got rid of that temptation for good then?"

She turns her head to look at him then, and the smile slowly grows, a mischievous glint to it.

"No, I don't think so."

* * *

The beginning of her seventh year. He has a job.

Her reaction is stunned silence, the expression in her eyes torn between horror and amusement.

Amusement wins.

"So..." she says at last, her lips curling into that smile, "I'll be shagging my teacher. How scandalous. And _you_ ," she turns to look at him, her eyes and tone provoking him, "will be shagging your student. _Professor_."

* * *

He enjoys teaching, likes his subject, but his NEWT class is an exquisite torture; not that she ever _does_ anything, but he only has to catch her eye and he's thinking of things that are not on the curriculum, and she knows it; he can see her amusement on her face, hear it in her voice as she calls him _Professor Greengrass_ , with that mocking edge that is faint enough to go unnoticed by anyone else. Or so he hopes.

It doesn't help that his cousin is in the same class, and best friends with her cousin (more than friends, if the rumours are right), and Scorpius Malfoy sees and notices everything. It is only a matter of time, Alex thinks, and he is right. He dismisses his class one day, and is bending over some notes for his Fourth Years when he feels that prickle in the back of his neck that suggests that he is not alone. He looks up, and the blonde boy (he has his father's face, but at seventeen he is already taller than Draco Malfoy, as tall as Alex) is standing in the doorway, leaning casually against the lintel and smiling in a way that is unbearably smug. Alex scowls (he cannot help it).

"What is it?"

Scorpius smirks.

"Don't worry. I won't tell anyone." And he is gone, and just like that, their secret is no longer safe.

* * *

Her prefect duties always seem to end somewhere around his office. She sits on his bed in her underwear and an unbuttoned school shirt, her ink letters showing under the collar and at her cuff, red hair tousled in post-shag relaxation, casually editing the essay she is due to hand in to him the next day, and he cannot help but think how wrong this whole thing is.

He offers her help with her essay. She says no, slightly shortly. He falls silent and lights a cigarette instead, watching the way her forehead creases when she's concentrating, and the small jerk of her head every time she spots a mistake, and the paleness of her bare legs sprawled out in front of her. Then his mouth opens, and he is somehow telling her that his little cousin has found them out, and although he tries hard not to sound as if it worries him, he doesn't think she's fooled. She tilts her eyebrow at him.

"Well, he won't tell," she says complacently.

"He might. He might tell your cousin..."

"He won't." She is quite adamant, and he wonders what makes her so sure, but then she is always sure.

Now that he has started to put voice to the ghosts that haunt him, though, he cannot stop, however much he hates how it makes him sound – has becoming a professor really made him start worrying about propriety? About morals? About _what people will think_?

"We can't keep it a secret forever. Someone's going to find out... whether he tells or not, someone will..."

"Let them find out..."

"We can't, Rose, I'm your _teacher_..."

She makes a sudden restless movement, a gesture of anger and frustration.

"Why the fuck did you have to go and get this job, Alex?"

"I needed a job," he points out, his voice tight, "It's a good one – I like it..."

She looks at him for a moment, her face that inscrutable blank that he hasn't learnt to read yet.

" _All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind_ ," she tells him, still looking at him. There is silence for a moment, while he does not reply. "Aristotle," she informs him distantly, when it becomes clear that he is not going to respond, "Thought you would have known that one."

And maybe, maybe she is right, because there was a time when he worried about nothing – when Alex Greengrass was invincible, when the world was at his feet, when his mind and tongue could win any battle and nobody could match him. Now, he is only too aware of his own vulnerability and the worries come creeping in, one on top of the other, and he misses that careless teenage boy he used to be. He has changed, though, it seems, and he's not sure what's changed him – the job or Rose... or maybe, maybe it's just called growing up.

She though, she is still seventeen going on eighteen, and she is still invincible, still untouchable, still flying high, and she does not want to think of 'what ifs' because what is life if you're always looking ahead to the drop?

* * *

The summer term of her seventh year.

Three years almost exactly since they met, and still he rarely knows what she is thinking, because she is the mistress of this dance, and just when he thinks he knows the steps, she changes them. Uncertainty, guilt, fear... he lives with them, those emotions he never knew before. She does not seem to notice; he cannot even tell whether she cares. She speaks in quotes and riddles, and it is like talking in a language you almost understand; you hear the words and you know that you know them, and you grasp for the meaning and it slips from you, just out of reach.

The stolen kiss behind his desk between classes. The sun is coming in the window, lighting the dust particles into a fine golden haze. He knows that it is a risk, but it is hot and he is tired and it is only a moment, after all, a moment in which her lips meet his and he can breathe in her scent... a moment that will be frozen forever in his memory.

The startled voice of the Deputy Headmaster breaks in, surprise turning to shock and disgust as he realises what he is seeing. The moment is lost in panic; this is not happening, this _cannot_ be happening, he will wake up and it will be a nightmare, his worst nightmare. His worst nightmare coming true. And in amongst the panic, there is guilt; guilt that he, a teacher, has committed the most terrible of sins, has failed in his responsibility, has abused his power... and it will haunt him forever, but later he cannot escape the knowledge that in that moment when the world came crashing down, his first thought, his greatest fear, was for the job that he must surely lose.

The accusing voices come thick and fast. The headmistress; the senior staff, the distant chatter of scandalised students.

She stands beside him, straight, upright and uncaring of it all. No panic in her face and voice; she is as calm and disdainful as always, and while his protesting voice - _"A one off! Won't happen again, I swear!"_ \- is drowned in accusations, hers comes loud and clear, the voice of reason.

"It's not like that. I'm not a child. We've been together for years, since we were both at school – there's nothing wrong with two students going out, is there? I'll be finished school in a few weeks; we'll just be two adults, and there's nothing wrong with that either, is there? He's only three years older than me.

"We're in love. I'm carrying his child."

The words fall like rocks in a deep pool. He does not know what they mean. He has never heard her speak plainly before; never heard her come straight to the point. And he does not know what to make of it. He does not know why she is saying it, whether it is true, because she's never mentioned love before, and she's never mentioned a child either. All he knows is fear and uncertainty, and the hopeless thing is that _he does not trust her_.

"You're carrying his _child_?" the voice of the Headmistress is heavy with horror and disbelief, as she turns to him, "Professor Greengrass... Alexander... is this possible? Have you had sexual relations with Miss Weasley?"

It is his death warrant, placed plainly in front of him, waiting for him to sign it. He cannot do it.

"No. It was a kiss – just one kiss. A mistake. Just a momentary thing..."

Her face is turned towards him, and he knows then that he was wrong. Her riddles have fallen away, and all that is left is raw emotion. Anger. Hurt. Betrayal. But she is still Rose Weasley, and she has danced for so long that she cannot stop.

" _Caesar's Angel_ ," she whispers, her voice somehow unfamiliar, changed. Dead. He cannot answer.

"I beg your pardon?" the Headmistress is incredulous.

"Look it up."

He does not need to look it up. He knows that it is Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_ to be exact. And Caesar's Angel was Brutus, the man guilty of the ultimate betrayal. Yes, now, at last, he understands what she is saying. But it is too late, because she has gone.


	2. The way the world ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This is the way the world ends; not with a bang, but a whimper." - T.S. Eliot
> 
> And even when the world ends, life somehow goes on.

# Part Two

## The way the world ends

She cannot count the nights of despair. She does not want to count them. The outraged clamour of her family's voices comes as if from far away. She ignores it. Her father and her uncles want to find him and bring him to account, and she does not try to stop them, because she is pretty sure that if Alex does not want to be found, he will not be found.

She ignores the gossip too; ignores the looks and questions. Silence is her friend. She works for her NEWTs, and the rest of the time, she lies on her bed in the dormitory and reads Greek tragedies, because the lives of the characters are worse than her own, and because she can hear his smooth, refined voice reading the lines aloud, the way he did on the top of the Astronomy Tower that first time, and it's like a kind of masochism, because no matter how much it hurts, she cannot stop going back to the memories.

She does not allow herself to analyse the past. To hurt is okay, to regret is not. Rose Weasley lives in the present.

Her mother comes up to visit her, when the school Medi-witch has confirmed what she already knew, and she pulls herself out of her apathy, to look her mother in the eyes and hug her briefly, hard.

"You need to think about what you're going to do," her mother says eventually.

"How d'you mean?"

Hermione Weasley sighs. "Come on, Rose. You can't pretend this isn't happening. But you know, this is your life, your body. Your choice. Whatever you decide, we'll support you..."

She suspects that what her mother means by 'we' is actually 'I', but the others will come round to it; they'll have to. She wasn't there when her family received the owl that gave them the news, and she's quite glad of that, because she is quite sure that nobody's reaction was as calm as her mother is now. She is quite sure as well that if her father were here, calm would be the last thing he was.

"I'm keeping it," she says blankly, because although it is true she has a choice, she knows what her decision is, for good or evil. She meets her mother's gaze, and there is no need for more words, because different as they are, they understand each other. And while Rose might want nothing more than to fall into her mother's arms, right now she can't, because she has to stay strong, has to hold herself together, because if she lets herself go, she has nothing left. Fortunately, her mother understands this too, and makes no move to try and comfort her. She simply nods, and accepts the decision, because her family learnt long ago that once Rose's mind is made up, it is of no use to try and change it.

He is gone.

A middle-aged witch comes to take Ancient Runes. She is nothing like as good a teacher as he was, which surprises Rose to realise, since she never really thought of him as a teacher before. But Rose is good at Ancient Runes, and she gets her O anyway, although she takes no joy in it, or in any of her other excellent grades.

On Graduation Day, although she has won several honours, Rose goes and sits by the lake while the ceremony takes places without her. It is peaceful there, with the only sound the water lapping gently at the rocky shore, and she rests her hand on her abdomen and wonders whether it's her imagination or whether she can really feel some sort of difference there, some sort of presence, the barest suggestion of a second living being that is part of her. Of course it's far too early to really feel any movement, but Rose thinks she can sense it nonetheless. It is a boy, she thinks. And for the first time, she lets herself think, lets herself realise that she is eighteen years old and she is going to be a mother, and that her baby's father has betrayed her, just as surely as she used him.

It is a good place to think calmly, alone amid the majestic mountains that are so much older, so much greater than her.

" _Here's only the mountain, Mother, inside, around, leaping, plunging down. The hips of the mountain where wombs curl inside wombs, generations of granite, coal, and Sequoya,_ " she murmurs to herself, a slight smile touching her lips as she thinks of it, of the mountain's womb, fertile and inhabited. Like her own. And then the smile fades, because it occurs to her that Alex probably would not know that those words were written by a poet called Elaine Upton.

She returns home. They are kind, supportive, as her mother promised, but it is stifling, and she cannot bear all the things that are not being said. Her world has shrunk, closed in until it is only her room and her books and the odd member of her family who shoves their way in unwelcomed, and the tiny beating life inside her. It is so small, so vulnerable in there, that it seems impossible that it can still be there, without her even doing anything, but it is. The nausea every morning tells her that, and the healer confirms it.

The weeks drift by. She hears rumours, filtering in. Alex is back – nobody quite knows where he went – but he no longer teaches at Hogwarts. She does not know what he is doing instead. She does not try and find out. He writes to her, once. She does not know what the letter says, because she does not read it, and he doesn't write again. She drops the unopened envelope on top of the clutter on her desk and forgets about it.

The sun filters in through her bedroom window, onto the wardrobe she painted golden yellow on a whim, one day in the Easter holidays of her Fifth Year; onto the old-fashioned dressing table with a gilt-rimmed mirror that was her quiet pride and satisfaction when she was twelve; onto the unmade bed, onto the over-loaded bookcase, the poetry scrawled on the walls, the pile of unironed clothes on the floor. It brings with it echoes of an outside world, a world she does not need or want. It must be, she thinks, a little like being in a womb herself, only not as dark. Here she is safe, here she is comfortable, here she does not have to do anything. The continual concerned whispers of her family; the worried face of her mother as she comes in and sits on the bed and tries to talk; the voice of her father, cracked with some emotion she does not care to analyse, telling her how much she is loved – they all recede off into the background, like the constant murmur of twin heartbeats beating in sync.

It is so undramatic; she does not look different; she still feels the odd twinge of nausea, but nothing like they warned her of. It is hard to believe that this is not a dream; that everything really has changed forever. [i]This is the way the world ends; not with a bang, but a whimper[/i], she thinks with her hand once more spread protectively over her abdomen, a position she finds herself in more and more often. T.S. Eliot. Alex would know that one.

And then – she isn't really sure how many days or weeks have done by – Albus is standing in the doorway, looking down at her with those steady green eyes he inherited from his father, from his long-dead grandmother. Albus, who used to be her best friend when they were both children. Albus, whom she still trusts, deep down, as much as she trusts anyone, even across the distance that has formed between them in the last few years.

"Me and Scorpius are going abroad in September. Travelling a bit," he tells her without preamble.

"That's nice for you." Her tones are clipped, inviting no further conversation.

"We're taking you with us. If you want to come," he adds the second sentence as if he had not really intended to give her the option, but she has turned her iciest glare on him and his Gryffindor courage fails him.

"Why would I want to come on your little romantic getaway?" she asks in disbelief, "Because being a third wheel is just so much fun...?"

Albus winces. "It wouldn't be like that." He has never told anyone in the family what the precise relationship between himself and Scorpius Malfoy is, but he doesn't bother to deny her underlying assumption. "It's not a romantic getaway. He wants you to come as well."

Rose is deeply sceptical of this. She and Scorpius were, she supposes, friends of a sort (funny how almost everything about her life seems to be in the past tense in her head now), but not the sort of friends who go on holiday together. He was Al's friend, always; the two boys inseparable and Rose off doing her own thing, not because she was unwelcome, but because that was the way she chose to be. No, not chose. It was the way she was, for good or evil. Rose Weasley walked by herself and allowed nobody truly to walk beside her. Not even Alex Greengrass.

"I can't travel magically when I'm pregnant," she points out. But Albus has anticipated this objection and smiles smugly.

"We're going by train."

"You don't want to take a pregnant woman on holiday. I'll be moody and bitchy..."

His smile does not shift.

"No different from usual then. We've known you a long time, Rose..."

Rose looks for another legitimate objection, and fails to find one. And giving in with grace and pretending it was her own idea is preferable to continuing to argue and ultimately being defeated.

"Fine. When are we going?"

"Next week. Better get packing."


	3. A Tale Told by an Idiot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Life ... is a tale  
> Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,  
> Signifying nothing." - William Shakespeare, Macbeth

# Part Three

## A tale told by an idiot

Paris, in September.

It is raining. Paris in the rain is much like any other city in the rain: grey. They visit some of the sights anyway, and Rose drifts round the Louvre and the Notre Dame in a dream, snatches of poetry passing through her head, the history and beauty of the places swelling her heart and almost allowing her to forget. She thinks that the boys would have spent a lot less time there without her (she loses them in the Louvre, and eventually finds them waiting for her by the entrance and looking bored) but that is their problem.

Albus lied to her. She is very much a third wheel, but nobody minds too much, so it doesn't matter (not yet, anyway), and she gives them as much space as she can. After all, it makes plenty of sense for the two boys to room together in the hotel, and for Rose to have her own room, and she pretends not to know that their room is a double one not a twin.

She goes for walks without them, leaving them to do whatever they want to do in the privacy of their room. It is still raining, and she gets wet through, but there is something exhilarating about walking in the rain and just not caring about the water that streams down through her hair. She stops on the Pont Notre Dame and leans against the edge of the bridge to watch the brown water swirl beneath her. She thinks that she would enjoy a cigarette right now, except that she has stopped smoking for the sake of the little life inside her, and anyway, she'd probably never get it lit in the rain. The edge of the bridge is pressing against her midriff, where there is a small bulge now; nothing that shows through her coat, but you can see it when she's only in a t-shirt.

"What are you doing here?" the amused voice behind her is unexpected, but being Rose, she does not jump but turns slowly towards Scorpius Malfoy, who is standing there holding an umbrella (to save the blonde hair he's so proud of, she thinks sardonically, aware that her own is plastered to her head) and looking at her, one eyebrow raised elegantly in question. She shrugs.

"I came for a walk. I thought you two were busy."

He leans sideways onto the balustrade beside her, then realises that it is soaking wet and straightens up with an exclamation, brushing off the sleeve of his expensive jacket. Rose's lips twitch upwards and he scowls at her.

"What have you done with Al anyway?" she asks, "You two had a tiff or something? Don't worry, I'm sure you'll kiss and make up..."

He goes red, and she is satisfied. Scorpius Malfoy is too much of a know-it-all, so she enjoys knowing the odd one of his secrets.

"How long have you known?" he asks after a pause, and she has a feeling he's been wanting to ask that for a while. Al doesn't care; it doesn't bother him that she knows, because Al knows her, knows she won't tell anyone. Few people trust Rose, but Albus is one of the few. But then, Al is a Gryffindor, so he trusts people too easily.

"A while," she replies blandly, "How long did you know about me and Alex?" 

He tilts his eyebrow at her. 

"A while." 

"Did Al know?" she hates having to ask, but she wants to know.

"No," he shakes his head. He says no more, but they both know the things that go unsaid. He kept her secret from the one person he keeps nothing from; she kept theirs from everyone, including his cousin. They are even.

"He really liked you," he says quietly. She shakes her head, an infinitesimal movement but he notices. "He did. Does. Probably."

It occurs to her that this is not obviously a good time or place to be having this sort of conversation; the middle of a bridge, in the rain, with people and cars coming and going all around them. But actually, there is no better time or place, because nobody is taking any notice of them, their voices are drowned out by the hubbub all around them, they are speaking in a foreign language, and in the smallest chance of somebody hearing and understanding, it will be a Muggle who does not know them and will never see them again. There are worse places to share secrets than the middle of a crowd.

"Why?" he asks, "Why are you shaking your head? Did he treat you badly...?"

She hesitates. Did he treat her badly? Only at the end...

"No. I treated him badly."

"Oh." He looks at her, and she knows he wants more answers, but she is not sure that she is ready to give him them. She is not really close to him, but if she was, she doesn't think she could even have said as much as she has. And he knows Alex; he is Alex's cousin.

"I never told him," she murmurs in the end, speaking almost to herself, "I never told him anything. Nothing important. I knew he wanted to know, I knew what he wanted me to say, but I didn't, because I didn't care enough, but I never told him that either."

He processes this for a moment.

"You never cared about him?"

She does not look at him; her eyes are fixed ahead, on the next bridge up the river. She does not remember what it is called, and that irritates her.

"I thought I didn't. Or not much. I was just messing around with him. I was messing with his head, and I knew it, and I liked it."

They are facts that have crystalised in her head over the weeks during which she had nothing to do but think. She still does not look at Scorpius, but she thinks he is slightly shocked; perhaps not by the facts themselves, but by the matter-of-fact way in which she admits to them. But she has underestimated him, and he has picked up on the important word in her confession.

"You thought you didn't?"

Her hands grip the rail tightly, and she finally turns towards him.

"Enough," she tells him, quite gently for her, "Back off, Scorpius. It's none of your business."

He isn't happy, but he does as he's told. For the time being.

* * *

Venice, in October.

Late Autumn sunlight filters through the mist and lights up the dusky pink and orange terracottas of small streets; the white marble of palaces; the brownish-blue of waterways

" _A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls_ ," she murmurs, standing at the edge of a narrow canal. She came out in a cardigan this morning, because the day had looked grey and foggy, but now the sun is up and burning away those mists. Albus, coming up behind her, raises quizzical eyebrows, and she smiles. 

"It's Shelley. _Underneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling, Venice lies_ ," she quotes the first part of the lines. He slings an arm round her shoulders, and she doesn't bristle for once. 

"You're happier," he comments, and it is not quite a question.

She rolls her eyes.

"D'you want the credit?"

"Nah..." he grins, "I know it was all my doing. Well, ours," he corrects himself, glancing over to where Scorpius is browsing shop windows and pretending not to be concerned about getting his mother the perfect present. She elbows her cousin in the ribs, but doesn't argue. "No need to credit us," he continues, "Just so long as we get named godfathers..." he indicates her gently curved belly.

She raises her eyebrows.

"Well, I can probably manage that. But just so you know, I'm not naming him after the pair of you..."

January is the bleakest month. December was pretty bleak too. He has been avoiding his family and friends ever since he got the sack from Hogwarts – ever since Rose, but he doesn't even dare to think that – so Christmas was a lonely affair.

Somewhere out there, beyond the cramped, overhanging, ancient walls of the city of York, where he has settled, for now at least, beyond the cold grey January horizon, there is a girl with Aeschylus inked on her arms, a girl with his child growing inside her (if he can even believe those words she spoke, which he becomes less and less sure of, and he cannot bring himself to ask anyone). He knows – he knows that what he did, what he said, was unforgivable. But then surely, what she did – to tell him then, like that, in that way – surely that was unforgivable too.

" _Life is a tale told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury... signifying nothing_ ," he finds himself murmuring, his voice as bleak as the month, as he sits at a desk covered in translations of Ancient Runes, then he drops his head into his hands because that was her game, and he doesn't know anyone else who plays it. He does not move for some time.

* * *

January is the bleakest month, but even while the earth is still, to all appearances dead and lifeless, there is new life stirring. The earth does not die, it only sleeps, and the lifeblood still pulses, strong and sure, even when the world is cold and colourless.

New life comes bursting in after the long hours of pain, small but vital, in a few final moments of noise and blood, and through the haze of exhaustion, there is something raw, something strong, and for the first time in her life, Rose has nobody's words but her own as she holds her son.

"Hello, baby," she murmurs, "You just put me through hell, you little bastard, but we're going to be okay, me and you..."

Me and you, me and you, you and me. The two of us, and they'd come a long way together, Rose and Baby, but however much she tries, Rose cannot quite convince herself that Baby is hers and hers alone. His hair is dark, his eyes speedily turn brown, and the tilt of his forehead... that's all Alex.

"What are you going to call him?" her mother (not really ready to be a grandmother quite yet, but making the best of it) asks, "You can't call him Baby forever."

Rose shrugs.

"I don't know. I'll think of something right in the end."

She wants his name to mean something, but when she says that, people have suggestions; things from her favourite plays, her beloved Greek legends, names of her family or of famous war heroes, names that have some relation to her own ("What about Briar? You know, briar roses..." Molly suggests sentimentally. Rose stares at her in disbelief, but before she can say anything rude, Lily cuts in, poker-faced, with "Or Thistle. You know, the Rose and the Thistle. He was presumably conceived in Scotland, so it's quite appropriate," and Molly's suggestion is lost in the general outrage – with which Rose does not join – at the inappropriateness of referencing Baby's _conception_ when naming him). The problem with all the ideas is that Rose wants it to be a name that has a significance only she understands, so nobody else's suggestion is agreeable, and for the moment, he remains as Baby.

It takes several weeks and a visit from Scorpius before she faces the thing that has been growing larger and larger in her mind, and becoming inevitable, unacknowledged, for some time.

"When are you going to write to Alex?" the blonde boy asks, and Rose glares at him, because nobody has dared to bring up the spectre of Baby's father; in fact, in all the months since she saw him, Scorpius is the only person who has mentioned Alex to her at all, and he has now done it twice.

"What makes you think I am?" she asks coldly.

He faces her, his arms folded.

"Well, it's bloody unfair if you don't. That's his child."

"My child."

"And his," Scorpius counters, "Look at him and tell me that's not my cousin's son..."

Rose wraps her arms tightly round the small warm bundle sleeping on her chest, and hides her face in his neck, smelling of baby and milk, which are more or less the same smell.

"Go away, Scorpius," she says in muffled tones, showing weakness that would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago. Somehow, since Baby, she is weaker. And Scorpius seems to sense it, because this time he does not do as he is told.

"Seriously, Rose. I don't know what happened between you two, and I'm not telling you you have to get back with him. You're the only person who knows what you want – I think you're probably the only person who's ever known that. But you have to let him see his baby!"

"I don't," she bursts out, and goes on, finishing the sentence before he can misunderstand, before he can argue, "I don't know what I want, Scorpius. I don't know, and when it comes to Alex, I never have. I thought it was nothing, I thought it was a game I was playing, I thought I could play it without getting emotions tangled up in it, I thought... I thought I couldn't get hurt," her voice has dropped to a whisper, "I was wrong."

He says nothing more, but squeezes her shoulder as he leaves, and she thinks that maybe he understands, and that maybe, just maybe, she understands at last herself.

She writes.

Her first letter is a quotation that she thinks says things quite neatly. She scrumples that one up and starts again, in her own words. They aren't as good, and what she ends up with is "Alex. I'm sending a picture. This is Baby. He's got your eyes. And your hair. And I think he's going to have your nose. Well, he kind of looks like you in general. Anyway, this is him. Rose."

It occurs to her that it's the first letter she's ever written to him in her own words.

He writes back. He is better at knowing what to say, but there is nervousness, caution in his tone. He thanks her for sending the picture; hints that he'd like to see more than a picture; hints that he'd like to see her too. He apologises for the thing he did when they parted. He was scared, he says, and he panicked. She knows how much it must cost him to admit that. He finishes with a P.S.

"His name is Baby?"

She explains about the name. Of all people in the world, he will understand. 

He does understand, but he thinks she is being ridiculous; he doesn't say so in as many words, but she can read between the lines and screws the letter up crossly, then unscrews it and thinks a bit more.

What sort of name does he like? she asks cautiously. He likes Tobias. Why? No reason; he just likes it. She thinks about it, and agrees with him. Toby Greengrass has a nice ring to it too. He is surprised at this; he assumed that Baby would be a Weasley. She is surprised too, and unsettled because she never thought about it, and now she does think about it, she would like him to be a Weasley. Toby Weasley-Greengrass? No, but Toby Greengrass-Weasley isn't too bad. Tobias then? Tobias it is. And Ronald, for her father.

Tobias Ronald Greengrass-Weasley officially has a name at last, and will be known as Toby.

* * *

One day in February, he visits.

Trying hard to hide his utter terror, he turns up at her parents' house, where she is still living, at a time carefully picked by Rose, when her mother is in and her father is out. Hermione greets him politely but stiffly – Rose's parents are aware by now that they do not, and probably never will, know the full story, but the fact remains that he got their daughter pregnant and then vanished. She then retreats, which Alex is not sure that he is entirely grateful for, because not even an angry mother is quite as scary as being along with Rose and their child.

The room is very still. Outside, spring is just beginning; the snowdrops and aconites are out and the air is softer. So is she; he looks at her, and remembers the fifteen-year-old girl he first met, who let nobody past her walls of riddles. She is still the same Rose – more thorns than soft petals – and yet not the same. There is a new look in her eyes, which he does not quite understand, although when she puts his son in his arms, he thinks he is beginning to. He has never held a baby before; he is awkward and Toby stirs and gives a small, dissatisfied squawk at the change of arms. He looks up guiltily.

"I've never done this before..."

"Neither had I until he came along," she points out unsympathetically, "You'll get used to him. Or he'll get used to you, one of the two."

Looking down at the scrunched up little face (he's not entirely sure he knows what she is seeing when she says that the baby looks like him) with its shock of dark hair and tiny fist that waves out of its blanket, he thinks that this is a feeling he could stand getting used to.

She moves closer to him, and his eyes flicker up again, his breath catching in his throat, because she is almost – not quite – close enough to brush against his forearms as he holds their child in front of him, and he can feel the warmth of her, and looking down he can see every freckle, every dark auburn eyelash, every gleam of sun on rust-red hair; he can see the fine sharp line of her lips and the hollow in her throat and those green-blue eyes she lies so well with.

"I'm sorry, Alex," she says quietly, and as usual, he has no idea what she means.

They walk. Through the village, along the street, under the great oak trees at the edge of the graveyard, with their still-bare twigs looking black against the sky, in among the gravestones and out the other side, down the hill, and on. Through life, through literature, through art, weaving in and out of the stories of her travels with Scorpius and Albus and his tales of Ancient Runes in Scandinavia and the Baltic, on into the future, Toby's future, which is a road that could lead anywhere. They skirt the edges of pain and despair and betrayal, and somehow they reach the outskirts of a place he never thought they would. Understanding.

Because perhaps she is beginning to understand, at last, his desperation, his confusion, his inability just to trust without knowing, without speaking or hearing. And he is starting to grasp the reason why she speaks in riddles, see what her walls are made of. They are not there, at understanding – yet. They circle round it, they do not enter. But they are on the right road, and there is time.

* * *

York, in July. 

It is raining. The little cobbled streets are dark with water and the buskers have given up and retreated, although there is still a dauntless group of tourists in front of the Minster, wearing raincoats and sporting umbrellas.

It doesn't matter, because the rain is outside and they are inside. He sprawls back on his sofa and watches her. She is still beautiful, still distant, still written in some foreign language, although he is beginning to be able to translate her, as he translates his Runes. She visits, he visits, they are always in each other's houses, and nobody else quite believes that they are not in each other's beds. But he looks only, the way he might look at a work of art, a Renaissance painting, his own private Madonna with a child at her breast and the tattooed words of Aeschylus lacing across her arms. Understanding there is, yes. Trust, no.

He tries to talk about it sometimes, but she is as good at talking as ever.

"I'm sorry," he has murmured to her, "You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, I know that," she always returns calmly, "You don't have to say it over and over again, Alex."

"Sometimes, I wonder," he says suddenly now, "What would have happened if I hadn't kissed you that day in the classroom. If the last year had never happened..." 

She looks at him again.

"It would still have happened," she points out, "Just differently. Not that differently though. I was already pregnant."

"Don't you ever do that though?" he persists, "Think about the things you could have done differently?"

"No, not really," she says absently, looking down at the baby again, but he is still talking.

"Imagine how we could have changed things. If I'd never come up to the Astronomy Tower that day in Seventh Year, if you hadn't been reading Aeschylus, if I hadn't got the job at Hogwarts, if I hadn't panicked and lied when they caught us..."

He trails off as she looks up with a little bit too much understanding in her eyes. 

" _I think we may go mad if we think about all that_ ," she murmurs. For once, it is not a book or a play or a poem; it is a film, and they watched that one together, so he ought to know it. He does.

" _I shall always think of it_." he finishes the quote softly, "Doctor Zhivago. Or the film of it, anyway."

"Well, don't," she tells him, as if his words had not been a quote, and as if it was that simple. She goes on with a note of impatience. "If you start like that, where d'you want to stop? You can't stop, because it's endless and pointless and they're all just stupid possibilities. If they'd never built the Astronomy Tower, if I'd never bought The Libation Bearers, if Aeschylus had never written it, if your grandmother had never left Greece, if my parents had never got their act together and hooked up, if Voldemort had won the war, if the Founders had never founded Hogwarts..." she pauses for the whisper of a moment in her outpouring of random possibilities, then finishes very quietly, "If I'd told you sooner."

And he isn't sure whether she means about being pregnant, or... well, anything else. Because he cannot help but remember those other words she spoke, standing in that classroom and facing the accusing faces.

_"We're in love."_ But that was a long time ago, and a lot has happened since, and there is no going back to that point in time and the way things were, even if those words had been true. 

"We can't change it," he says at last, after a long pause. 

"No," she agrees, "And we shouldn't want to."

He isn't sure that he agrees, but she does not want to dwell on it, and the conversation is over. Whether they want to change the past or not, the truth is that they can't, so they might as well accept the present as it is, and the future will find them itself.

* * *

The small boy runs through York's Museum Gardens. 

It is Autumn, and he is small enough that his gait is still unsteady, as if he could wobble over at any moment, but he shuffles through the leaves, laughing with delight, great golden drifts pushed aside by a pair of scarlet wellies. A close observer would note that he has dark hair, almost black but with a hint of auburn brought out by the late slants of sunshine through the trees, that there is an aristocratic line to his nose and something Mediterranean in his big dark eyes.

A young woman watches him, her hands on her hips and a faraway expression on her face. That close observer might notice that she is really very young, and that although she has succumbed to the chill Autumn air and is wearing a long-sleeved knit, the neckline is low enough to see the edge of some sort of writing on her skin, appearing from under her collar.

There is a man. He appears from the trees beside them, and she swings to meet him, and although she betrays no surprise, it seems that he was not expected.

"Alex. I didn't know you were back in England. How did you find us?"

He answers only the last part.

"Easy enough. Your mum told me where you'd gone."

The small boy turns, sees, yells, sending a pair of pigeons clattering up through the branches in a fright.

"Daddy!"

He barrels over, a sturdy little thing bundled into his coat, and flings himself into the man's arms. Here, at least, is a greeting worth having, but although the young man laughs and wraps his arms around the child and seems delighted, the lack of greeting from anyone else does not seem to bother him. That observer might have thought that the two adults were no more than acquaintances, that perhaps she was the nanny or the au pair girl as she stands beside them, watching their reunion with a slight smile on her face.

Then the child is off again, trundling along the path with his father's hand clutched tightly in his. She follows, still smiling, but it is some time before he is released, the child persuaded to run ahead along the curving path, to see whether there are any squirrels in the bushes down by the fence. Alex turns back; she is still a few feet behind him.

"So..." he speaks quietly, but she hears him, "Have you thought?"

"I never stop thinking," she replies, "People generally don't, until they die..."

He knows that she knows what he means. He waits. She catches up with him and they walk on.

"Things have changed," he remarks.

"Things tend to," she remarks neutrally.

"You told me once," he says slowly, "that you loved me. Or at least, you told other people that you loved me, while I was there."

"So I did."

"Did you regret saying that?" he glances down at her as he speaks. She is looking ahead, keeping an eye on the child, who is now collecting burnished leaves among the undergrowth.

"I never regretted anything," she looks up at him, her face a mask, "I think that's where I went so wrong."

"And now?"

"Now things have changed," she walks away from him a few paces, then stops and looks back, rocking on her heels, " _Nothing speaks the truth, Nothing tells us how things really are, Nothing forces us to know what we do not want to know, Except pain._ "

For a moment, they stand and look at each other, in the shadow of the crumbling pale-stone abbey.

"Aeschylus again?" he asks at last, and she nods, with that quirky smile that is only half sharing the joke and half keeping it for her own private amusement.

"I'd get that one done too, if I had any room left on my arms."

"Well, what is the truth then?" he asks with smallest hint of impatience, or perhaps it's desperation, "What is the way things really are? You asked for time, Rose, and I gave you time. All I want back is an answer..." 

She could drag it out, she could dance again, just out of his reach, change the tempo so he can't keep up. It's what she's always done. But the dance is old and her feet feel tired, and perhaps inside her, there are words that have been waiting to come out for a long time.

They will wait a little longer though, so she stretches out a hand instead, a silent answer, and he takes it, fingers touching and twining, a quiet moment caught in time, a moment of understanding, trust and something else, something sweet and strong and (for now) nameless. The moment is broken too soon; there is a toddler to attend to, squirrels to find, a stroll to finish and a world to walk through, but their linked fingers are strong and this time, maybe, they will dance in step.


End file.
